14 ms·

999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

59 points by DamonHD 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago
There was an article on Tedium just ~1 week ago about the emergency numbers! http://tedium.co/2017/06/20/911-emergency-system-history/ http://tedium.co/2017/06/20/911-emergency-system-history/ It references the birth of 999, but then continues with the story of emergency numbers in the US. Definitely an interesting read.
- notwhoyouthink 9y ago
  Yikes, the font on that website is incredibly distracting. Hard enough that I went and downloaded Readability for Chrome just to get through the article. Reading more than a sentence caused my eyes to sort of glaze over and even when trying to focus I was reading but not grasping. Can't say I've ever had a font do that to me.
  - aquadrop 9y ago
    In cases like this, you can just "inspect" on the text block, find the rule for the font-family and set whatever font you like, no need for extensions :)
  - 4rt 9y ago
    firefox reading mode (i believe it's the same devs as that chrome extension? icbw) is the first button i press on most sites. i couldn't do without it.
noncoml 9y ago
999 was crappy design for "emergency" as, in the analog era, it would take almost 9x the time to dial it as that of a number like 111 or 112.
- jimmytidey 9y ago
  I was told it was selected because it can be dialed in the dark - just go all the way way with the rotor three times. I've always found that 999 sounds like an emergency, the biggest number. 112 seems absolutely arbitrary to me.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    With 112 it sounds like 111 is where it's really at but we get the 112 service.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- comstock 9y ago
  Well the Wikipedia article on the subject is very instructive: "The 9-9-9 format was chosen based on the 'button A' and 'button B' design of pre-payment coin-operated public payphones in wide use (first introduced in 1925) which could be easily modified to allow free use of the 9 digit on the rotary dial in addition to the 0 digit (then used to call the operator)" So there were valid technical reasons, as well as 999 being harder to dial by accident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_num...
  - noncoml 9y ago
    > So there were valid technical reasons Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive.
    - ptaipale 9y ago
      Yes, but here it's hardly reasonable to describe the choice of numbers as "crappy design". It's a rational choice: a number that is easy to remember, and accidental calls don't happen too easily, making the service better available for actual emergencies. Britain still talks of 999 only, even if 112 works just the same - today, as extremely few phones use decadic dialing any more, a number that would be represented by just four on-hook pulses is no longer any more of a problem from the point of accidentally dialing it.
elpocko 9y ago
I'll just stick to good old 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3.
- bitJericho 9y ago
  Well that's easy to remember.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pcunite 9y ago
I remember a commercial from the 80's for an emergency number described as "dial 800 then keep dialing 9".
e0 9y ago
This is also the subject of the latest "Seriously..." http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05711xn http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05711xn
sambeau 9y ago
I'm reminded of this: Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges with three matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like 221-1111. Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Woz begin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph. The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently. Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver was snatched up and slammed down. Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep." The children of America were making their first prank call. And the person who answered the phone was Woz. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lduxa/til_steve_wozniak_was_the_first_owner_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lduxa/til_s...
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  For the benefit of people reading this on mobile, here is the text from the above comment without the indentation: Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and hislongtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges withthree matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like221-1111. Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Wozbegin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months ofscheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phonenumber, and his greatest philonumerical triumph. The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrongnumbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible tomisdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there wasnever anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or,not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of atelevision in the background, or somebody talking softly in English orSpanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently. Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a womansay, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiverwas snatched up and slammed down. Suddenly, it all made sense: thehundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. Theywere picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom ofthe handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beepbeep beep beep." The children of America were making their first prank call. And the person who answered the phone was Woz.
singularity2001 9y ago
999 is the perfect number for germans as nine-nine-nine is homophonic to nein-nein-nein, meaning no-no-no!!!
ycaspirant 9y ago
Why isn't there an app for this? I live in a country where emergency services are completely unreliable, so my main experience of 911 / 999 emergency services is from television and films, and I've noticed a fair amount of friction in the phone call process, especially when it comes to verbally communicating the address. In addition to the phone number, wouldn't it be useful to also have native apps for this which optionally grant GPS access and camera access at the touch of a button?
- JdeBP 9y ago
  If you want to learn more about this, then I suggest reading about the several and various initiatives that there have been over the past few years, in the U.K., the U.S.A., and elsewhere, to deal with with the problem of VOIP and mobile telephones. They have included things such as (for example) the idea that the immediately upstream ISP, for VOIP, populates an ESDB/ALIDB with location data that it knows because it knows the physical location of the VOIP connection to its network. The names that you want to start with are "Enhanced 911" and "Next Generation 911".

59 points by DamonHD 9y ago

There was an article on Tedium just ~1 week ago about the emergency numbers! http://tedium.co/2017/06/20/911-emergency-system-history/ http://tedium.co/2017/06/20/911-emergency-system-history/ It references the birth of 999, but then continues with the story of emergency numbers in the US. Definitely an interesting read.

notwhoyouthink 9y ago
Yikes, the font on that website is incredibly distracting. Hard enough that I went and downloaded Readability for Chrome just to get through the article. Reading more than a sentence caused my eyes to sort of glaze over and even when trying to focus I was reading but not grasping. Can't say I've ever had a font do that to me.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  In cases like this, you can just "inspect" on the text block, find the rule for the font-family and set whatever font you like, no need for extensions :)
- 4rt 9y ago
  firefox reading mode (i believe it's the same devs as that chrome extension? icbw) is the first button i press on most sites. i couldn't do without it.

noncoml 9y ago

999 was crappy design for "emergency" as, in the analog era, it would take almost 9x the time to dial it as that of a number like 111 or 112.

jimmytidey 9y ago
I was told it was selected because it can be dialed in the dark - just go all the way way with the rotor three times. I've always found that 999 sounds like an emergency, the biggest number. 112 seems absolutely arbitrary to me.
- celticninja 9y ago
  With 112 it sounds like 111 is where it's really at but we get the 112 service.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
comstock 9y ago
Well the Wikipedia article on the subject is very instructive: "The 9-9-9 format was chosen based on the 'button A' and 'button B' design of pre-payment coin-operated public payphones in wide use (first introduced in 1925) which could be easily modified to allow free use of the 9 digit on the rotary dial in addition to the 0 digit (then used to call the operator)" So there were valid technical reasons, as well as 999 being harder to dial by accident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_num...
- noncoml 9y ago
  > So there were valid technical reasons Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    Yes, but here it's hardly reasonable to describe the choice of numbers as "crappy design". It's a rational choice: a number that is easy to remember, and accidental calls don't happen too easily, making the service better available for actual emergencies. Britain still talks of 999 only, even if 112 works just the same - today, as extremely few phones use decadic dialing any more, a number that would be represented by just four on-hook pulses is no longer any more of a problem from the point of accidentally dialing it.

elpocko 9y ago

I'll just stick to good old 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3.

bitJericho 9y ago
Well that's easy to remember.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

pcunite 9y ago

I remember a commercial from the 80's for an emergency number described as "dial 800 then keep dialing 9".

e0 9y ago

This is also the subject of the latest "Seriously..." http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05711xn http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05711xn

sambeau 9y ago

I'm reminded of this: Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges with three matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like 221-1111. Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Woz begin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph. The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently. Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver was snatched up and slammed down. Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep." The children of America were making their first prank call. And the person who answered the phone was Woz. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lduxa/til_steve_wozniak_was_the_first_owner_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lduxa/til_s...

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
For the benefit of people reading this on mobile, here is the text from the above comment without the indentation: Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and hislongtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges withthree matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like221-1111. Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Wozbegin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months ofscheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phonenumber, and his greatest philonumerical triumph. The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrongnumbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible tomisdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there wasnever anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or,not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of atelevision in the background, or somebody talking softly in English orSpanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently. Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a womansay, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiverwas snatched up and slammed down. Suddenly, it all made sense: thehundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. Theywere picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom ofthe handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beepbeep beep beep." The children of America were making their first prank call. And the person who answered the phone was Woz.

singularity2001 9y ago

999 is the perfect number for germans as nine-nine-nine is homophonic to nein-nein-nein, meaning no-no-no!!!

ycaspirant 9y ago

Why isn't there an app for this? I live in a country where emergency services are completely unreliable, so my main experience of 911 / 999 emergency services is from television and films, and I've noticed a fair amount of friction in the phone call process, especially when it comes to verbally communicating the address. In addition to the phone number, wouldn't it be useful to also have native apps for this which optionally grant GPS access and camera access at the touch of a button?

JdeBP 9y ago
If you want to learn more about this, then I suggest reading about the several and various initiatives that there have been over the past few years, in the U.K., the U.S.A., and elsewhere, to deal with with the problem of VOIP and mobile telephones. They have included things such as (for example) the idea that the immediately upstream ISP, for VOIP, populates an ESDB/ALIDB with location data that it knows because it knows the physical location of the VOIP connection to its network. The names that you want to start with are "Enhanced 911" and "Next Generation 911".